Gender Ratios Of Presidential Campaign Staffs

(See also: Racial Diversity In Presidential Campaign Staffs).

At The Huffington Post, Zephyr Teachout and Kelly Nuxoll provide a breakdown of presidential campaign staffs by gender. (They also provide links to an explanation of their methodology and a spreadsheet of their data). Yay them!

What they didn’t provide is simplistic color graphs for the simpleminded among us, like me. So that’s what I’m adding.

Erica at Slog writes:

Just two of 15 senior Edwards staffers are women, with women filling 37 percent of the top-paid roles. Three of Obama’s 12 senior staffers are women, and women fill 45 percent of the highest-paying jobs. […] On her campaign, eight of 14 senior staffers, 12 of the top-20 staffers, and 52 percent of the highest-paid staffers are women. Women are also much more likely to play important strategic roles in the Clinton campaign; in the other campaigns, women are more likely to work in finance and internal operations.

This may seem like petty stuff, but I think it foreshadows the gender breakdown of executive staff under a Clinton administration. As I’ve written before, gender matters. Women understand, and care about, women’s interests, which is one reason many women are supporting Clinton despite reservations about her politics.

TheGarance suggests that this data “can fairly be viewed as proxies for what their administrations would look like.” Matthew Yglesias expands on Garance’s point:

Indeed, my bet is that one of the most important legacies of a Hillary Clinton administration would be bequeathing to the Democratic Party a network of powerful plugged-in insiders that winds up containing substantially more women in senior roles than we have right now, along with perhaps a higher number of men comfortable working with power female colleagues and superiors. Given that the party’s voting base is composed mostly of women, this is a transformation that’s going to have to be made sooner or later, and the progressive coalition will definitely be stronger once it’s done.

For example — as Donna quoted in “Alas” comments — “The daughter of Mexican immigrants, Patti Solis hails from Chicago and likely to be White House chief of staff and gatekeeper should Mrs Clinton become president. The President’s Chief of Staff is a very powerful position sometimes dubbed “The Second-Most Powerful Man in Washington”. ”

Kevin Drum adds, “if you really want to see a testosterone imbalance, check out each candidate’s list of foreign policy advisors: a grand total of 7 women out of 148 advisers.”

Honestly, I still don’t favor Hillary among the Democrats running; I have problems with all the candidates, but Hillary’s generally hawkish views on international policy are a deal-killer for me. Nonetheless, it’s likely I’ll wind up voting for her in the general election, even if I vote against her in the primary. As Bitch PhD points out, that Hilary will probably bring in the most diverse staff with her — both racially and gender-wise — is a significant consolation.

And there’s no doubt, looking at those senior staff numbers, that Obama and Edwards both suck when it comes to hiring women into positions of power.

Curtsy: Ann at Feministing.